Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Nearly Half of Russians Say Stalin’s Harsh Rule Justified by Results, Up from a Quarter in 2012

Paul Goble

Staunton,
March 31 – Forty-five percent of Russians now say that Stalin’s harsh
repression was justified by the results he achieved as a result, a figure that
is almost twice as high as in 2012, according to a new Levada Center poll.The same survey found that the share of
Russians who believe that nothing justifies what Stalin did has fallen
significantly.

Aleksey
Grazhdankin, the Levada Center’s deputy director, says that “for the majority
of respondents, the name of Stalin as before is connected with terror, but
since the last decade there has been a growth in the share of those Russians
who give a positive assessment to what Stalin did. It reached its highest level
ever last year, he adds.

Part of
the explanation for the increase in approval for Stalin, Grazhdankin suggests,
is to be found in Russians’ assessment of the events in Ukraine. Seeing what
instability can lead to, he says, many Russians are now “prepared to sacrifice
the interests of a minority in order to preserve the current status quo and
stability.”

Five
years ago, 32 percent of the Russian sample said that Stalin was a criminal;
now, only 25 percent do, and 57 percent say they oppose designating him as
one.It isn’t that Russians love him, the
Levada Center sociologist says. Rather, they see virtues in a strong leader
when as they now think is the case their country is surrounded by enemies.

Not
surprisingly, Stalin is most positively viewed by the least educated, those
living in villages and small cities and the elderly. Young people are largely
indifferent to him, while the most antagonistic to Stalin are the middle-aged
and the relatively well-off populations of the large cities, such as
Muscovites.

Stalin remains a divisive force for
many, Ivan Nikitchuk, a KPRF Duma deputy who wants to rename Volgograd
Stalingrad, an idea that the Levada Center poll found is supported by 31
percent of its sample, says that when Russians compare their situation now with
what it was under Stalin, they draw the “correct” conclusion that it was better
then than now.

Nikolay Svanidze, a member of the
Presidential Human Rights Council, in contrast, says that “the moral
rehabilitation of Stalin which will intensify in advance of Victory Day would
be a personal insult for millions of people.”

And Yabloko Party leader Sergey Mitrokhin says that the
revival of support for Stalin reflects the failure of the country to undergo
any “de-Stalinization” during the first two post-Soviet decades and
consequently the Soviet dictator remains “an instrument” for some to resolve
political tasks such as promoting a cult of a new leader, in the present case,
Vladimir Putin.